The Mistress's Revenge: A Novel

by Tamar Cohen

  “Why don’t you just admit it. You don’t care about me. You don’t care what happens to me. Me and Jamie are just an irritation to you.”

  “That’s not true.” I was quite indignant. “I love you both.” It sounded weak and unconvincing, so I expanded. “I adore you both. But you have to understand that sometimes adults have their own problems. You don’t have a monopoly on shitty things happening, you know.”

  I’d intended it to sound informal and intimate, but Tilly looked startled by the word “shitty.” I had to quickly reassure her that I’d call the school first thing tomorrow to fix up a special appointment with her main teachers.

  “If you’re sure you can fit it into your busy schedule,” Tilly sneered.

  Sometimes, you know, I feel like I just can’t do any more than I’m doing. I know it’s not perfect but it’s all I can give at the moment. I wish the children were just a little bit more, well, empathetic. It really would be such a relief.

  When I went out of Tilly’s room, leaving her staring stony faced ahead with her iPod headphones stuffed into her ears, I noticed Jamie’s bedroom door was slightly open, and there was a slightly muffled breathing coming from inside that made me think he’d been listening to me and Tilly arguing. For a moment, I hesitated on the landing, wondering if I should go in and chat to him and explain things. But, you know, my head was pounding and I was still upset about what had happened with Susan, and the scene with Tilly hadn’t helped, and all the way home I’d been picturing the large glass of wine I was going to pour myself from the fridge. So I carried on down the stairs.

  The thing about kids, as I’m sure you know, is they’re very resilient.

  I had half expected your email of course. The moment I’d made that arrangement with Susan to meet at Starbucks, I’d known you wouldn’t like it and realized there was a fairly good chance you’d be getting in touch. I didn’t know you’d feel quite so strongly about it, though, I confess. I mean “campaign of harrassment.” What’s that all about? I make a perfectly reasonable arrangement to meet an old friend for a coffee and suddenly I’m mounting a campaign of harassment. Really, Clive, you need to work on your perspective issues. You really do.

  As for that part about things being about to turn “nasty,” I do sometimes think you must be plundering your hairdresser’s stories for dialogue. That isn’t you speaking, Clive. I know you, remember? (Suddenly an image of the ferret-faced squeegee man pops into my head, dirty water slopping out of his bucket as he hurried away.)

  I do take your point about you giving me every opportunity for withdrawing voluntarily from your life. The problem has always been that I don’t really want to withdraw from your life. Nice of you to give me the opportunities though. Was that what you were doing when you fucked me on that bed in the windowless hotel room? Giving me an opportunity to withdraw?

  It’s a good thing I didn’t have time to sit and analyze that message properly, or I might have gotten quite depressed. Instead, I had to hurry out of the door to a meeting at Tilly’s school. I was quite taken aback when I rang first thing this morning (well, okay, maybe not completely first thing, but definitely before my morning nap. Oh, and maybe it was they who called me and not the other way around, now I come to think about it) and was told that the head teacher and Tilly’s form teacher would like to see me at my “earliest convenience.” I didn’t tell them that no appointment was really convenient for me, or that my packed timetable of compulsive email checking left little in the way of free time.

  When I arrived at the school, Tilly was slouched in a plastic chair outside the head teacher’s office, chewing on a piece of her hair.

  “Everything okay, darling?” I asked her brightly, principally for the benefit of the head teacher’s secretary who was sitting at an adjacent desk.

  Tilly gave me a scornful look, scrutinizing what I was wearing. Did your kids do that? Vet everything you and Susan wore to their school in case it somehow reflected badly on them? I imagine it’s not so pronounced in the kind of private schools they went to. I expect there’s more of a prevailing bohemian liberalism there, as opposed to Tilly’s school, where the wrong kind of jeans can permanently brand a parent and bring lasting shame on their offspring. I have to say that, under her critical glare, I suddenly wished I’d made a bit more of an effort. There’s nothing quite like being judged by a thirteen-year-old to make one feel wanting. Your email this morning unsettled me so much that I just threw on whatever was closest to hand from the pile on the floor by my bed. Looking down I noticed that the black jumper I was wearing had drips of toothpaste all the way down it, which I tried to scrape off with my fingernail.

  The head teacher, Mrs. Sutherland, and Tilly’s form teacher, a boyman called Mr. Meyer, who didn’t look old enough to shave, sat side by side on a sofa in Mrs. Sutherland’s office. Much to Tilly’s obvious annoyance, they wanted to see me first on my own.

  “We’re a little concerned about Tilly,” was Mrs. Sutherland’s opening gambit. Well, you can imagine I was a little bit nonplussed. I’d gone in there thinking I was going to get a quick appraisal of Tilly’s academic progress, not to listen to any concerns (and to be quite frank, after my coffee with Susan yesterday, I’ve had just about enough of other people’s concerns).

  She went on to say that Tilly’s attitude had changed markedly over the past few weeks. That was the exact word. Markedly. Apparently she’s gone from being a conscientious A student to neglecting her homework and looking blatantly bored, and on occasion, being rude in lessons.

  “Is there anything happening at home that might be able to explain the change in Tilly’s behavior?” asked the quasi-adolescent Mr. Meyer.

  Naturally, my first reaction was to tell them to mind their own fucking business. As if I’d tell them what was happening at home. If indeed anything were ever to happen at home, which of course it doesn’t (ours being the house where nothing ever happens).

  I pointed out that Tilly was at that age where hormones start kicking in and kids start acting completely out of character. I was annoyed to find my voice wavering as I spoke and to realize that I was on the verge of tears.

  “Usually the hormonal problems tend to manifest themselves at home rather than at school,” Mrs. Sutherland said doubtfully. “It’s unusual for a girl like Tilly to lose her way so noticeably and so suddenly.”

  When Tilly was called in to join us, Mrs. Sutherland repeated much of what she’d just told me.

  “Have you got any explanations, Tilly?” she asked her. “Is there anything troubling you? You’re such a talented girl. We just want to help.”

  Tilly sat sullenly, still chewing on her hair, and shook her head. The teachers turned their eyes to me then, but I found I didn’t have anything to add. My mind was still caught up in that phrase Mrs. Sutherland had used, about Tilly having “lost her way.”

  My daughter had lost her way. And suddenly I wondered whether that’s what has happened to me too. Have I lost my way, and Daniel also? The three of us wandering blindfold around our lives, bumping into walls.

  Have I done that to us? Have I made us like that? Or was it you, Clive? Is it your fault my daughter can’t find her way back? Have you ripped up the map that we were all reading from?

  Is this because of you?

  On the way back from school a very odd thing happened.

  I was crossing the main road past the library when I saw a man in a familiar jacket sitting on a bench farther along. Black leather with stripes down the sleeves. When I got the other side, I turned the opposite way and hurried along the road, but I knew without looking that he was following me.

  Of course I knew you had sent him. I kept trying to draw comfort from that. I kept trying to make myself see him as a present from you to me, but my stupid heavy basketball of a heart was bouncing around uncontrollably in my chest, bruising my insides, and waves of dizziness were passing through me.

  Then all of a sudden, he wasn’t there anymore. The insistent padding of
his too-white sneakers was no longer echoing the sound of my own footsteps. I slowed down, my pulse still painfully hyperactive, my nerves still stretched tight as catgut. I decided to cut back home through the park, but guess who was waiting by the park entrance?

  I’m only joking! I know you know exactly who was waiting there, in his black leather-look jacket and his nasty jeans, leaning against a lamppost smoking a cigarette. Looking at me. Looking at me. Looking at me.

  “Nice day, isn’t it?” he said to me as I approached him, trying not to look terrified.

  When I didn’t reply, he slowly straightened up and ground his cigarette butt under the sole of his sneakers.

  “You’ve been upsetting people,” he told me, and his voice was as casual as Sunday brunch.

  “You’ve been upsetting friends of mine. You need to stop doing that. Do you get what I mean?”

  He smiled at me and I noticed that the teeth in the front were several shades whiter than those at the back. Do you think that’s some sort of money-saving thing? Did he not think it was worth whitening the back ones because nobody really sees them?

  I couldn’t speak, of course. I actually wanted to laugh because it was all so preposterous. Who was this man threatening me at the gateway to the park where Tilly and Jamie used to play on the swings on winter mornings so cold their breath came out in puffs of white smoke? Since when did my life turn into a low-budget gangster movie?

  The man was still smiling, but my face was frozen with fear. It had to be some sort of a joke, right? And yet it wasn’t a joke. He was the thank-you gift you’d sent me after our night together. But he couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be real.

  I walked past him without speaking, half expecting him to reach out to grab hold of me, or at least to follow me, but he remained immobile. In the park, the Mothers’ Mafia were out in force, with their three-wheel buggies and their toddlers clutching their organic muesli bars. I have to say I was bewildered as I looked at them. Hadn’t they witnessed what just happened to me? How could they still be living in a world where the worst thing that could happen was little Jack refused to wear his tricycle helmet, when just yards away a man had quite clearly threatened to do me harm?

  Or had he?

  By the time I reached the opposite entrance to the park, I was already starting to have doubts about what had happened. It was too surreal. Things like that just didn’t happen. Not in places like this. Not to people like me. I thought again about what he’d said. He hadn’t actually made any threats, had he? I could have been wrong. I could have misinterpreted his meaning. By the time I was halfway home, I was starting to feel foolish. And do you know what was the weirdest thing? Really, I knew that you had sent him, knew he’d been standing outside my house the other day, knew exactly what he was trying to say. And yet my stupid, useless, common sense refused to let me fully confront it.

  By the time I put my key in the door, my hand had stopped trembling, and I had started to rethink my reaction.

  You wouldn’t have sent the man with the stripes on his sleeves, if indeed you did, unless you still wanted to maintain a connection to me. He is the go-between, the bringer of conflicted love notes and billets-doux. He is the proof, white sneakered and puffed-up chested, that you still care.

  The man with the two-tone teeth is another link to you. He scares me, and yet now that he has gone, I find myself wanting to see him again. Is that perverse? Through my bedroom window, I scan the empty pavements opposite looking for a flash of over-white sneaker and am almost disappointed to see nothing.

  I feel things are moving forward. There’s a momentum about life at the moment, isn’t there? The man with the leather jacket represents progress of a sort.

  I hope Helen will be pleased.

  The whooshing in my head is getting worse. If I look to the side suddenly, it feels like my brain has come loose in my skull and is skidding around, and I feel light-headed all the time.

  I googled the symptoms and while it could just be the withdrawal from antidepressants or the eccentric mix of other generously donated prescription drugs, it apparently could also be stress. I feel like my life has slipped out of gear somehow and I can’t seem to get it back.

  I try to talk to Tilly about what’s happening with her, but everything I say comes out wrong and she looks at me as though I’m an alien who has switched places with her real mother.

  “Your teachers say you’ve lost your way,” I babble. But when she looks at me, I can’t meet her eyes. I spend a lot of time in the cubbyhole. It feels strangely safe.

  This morning, there was a phone call on the landline. Usually a call on the landline can only mean my dad or one of Daniel’s aging parents, phoning from afar with voices tremulous with reproach, or else a recorded message advertising itself in advance with a mechanical click. This time though, there was a real live, non-parent person on the phone. He was very polite, but there was a hard edge to his voice.

  “Mrs. Islip?” Don’t you love the way people who don’t know you often think conferring you with a marital status you don’t possess is somehow akin to doing you a favor? As if they’re graciously extending you a particular courtesy you ought to be grateful for?

  He was phoning from a debt collection agency. The whooshing in my head reached epic proportions while he spoke. I owe his client “a substantial amount” of money apparently. He wanted to know what plans I had in mind with regard to repaying the money.

  My tongue swelled up in my mouth, huge and leaden, like a slab of cold, congealed lasagne. He told me the substantial amount I owed and it sounded ludicrous. Impossible.

  “Are you quite sure that’s correct?” My voice belonged to someone else.

  “I’m afraid it often comes as quite a shock to people to hear the figures out loud. Haven’t you been reading the letters we’ve sent you?”

  Of course, he knew very well that I hadn’t been. I’m a textbook case, I imagine. Just like all the rest.

  “Can I take it you’ll be making a payment within the next ten days?” He was so unerringly polite. They must go on training courses for that, don’t you think?

  “We don’t expect the full amount of course, but my client does need to see some evidence of good intentions. Nobody wants to get the bailiffs involved.”

  The bailiffs? I have to tell you, Clive, coming hot on the heels of the man in the leather jacket, this phone call only served to convince me further that I’ve somehow stumbled onto the wrong film set. This is not my life. This is not who I am.

  But then again, as everyone keeps saying, I’m not myself. So perhaps this is indeed who I am now.

  I’m so confused and my head won’t leave me alone. It taps out drum tattoos on the inner surface of my brain.

  I need you to help me feel right again.

  I need you turn me back into me.

  I wish you’d get a Facebook page, Clive. I really do. How many times did I used to urge you to do that, when we were still “together” (what a strange phrase for two people who were clearly such poles apart).

  “Oh, I would never do that,” you’d say vehemently. “I find it so sinister.”

  Thank God I’m Facebook friends with Susan and Emily. It’s so reassuring to go to their pages and be able to keep abreast of all the things that are happening in your lives, particularly since it has become so difficult to get hold of Susan. (I worry about how much this vows business is taking out of her. She’s clearly overwhelmed with it all.)

  I’ve just been looking at Emily’s page. My goodness, she has a lot of friends, doesn’t she? They’re all young and attractive, just like her and lots of them have double-barreled names that take up three lines on her “friends” list.

  I suspect Emily is finding time weighing on her a bit much. She updates her status several times a day, and it’s all about her pregnancy. She clearly imagines she’s the first woman ever to have reproduced, and every new development is accompanied with a row of exclamation marks, as if we’ll all be as amazed a
s she is.

  Emily Gooding-Brown is finding it impossible to sleep because the baby keeps waking her up!!!!!!

  Emily Gooding-Brown can’t find any clothes to fit her!!!!!

  Underneath each of her status updates are always a clutch of comments, leading me to suppose that most of her friends are as time-rich as she is.

  Georgia Hanley-Corrigan Not long now, babes!

  Often I’ll add a comment of my own. I always try to be positive and supportive—I see myself as a sort of trusted auntie figure, and I make sure never to be patronizing. Even if sometimes I do want to just write

  Sally Islip says, why not get a life Emily!!!!!!!

  This morning I was enjoying a particularly lengthy exchange between Emily and her friend Flikka (I think it’s lovely the way so many of her friends have these amusing nicknames, don’t you?). They were talking about the summer holidays and Flikka, who is clearly also about to drop, was stating her intention of spending a few weeks in Mummy’s place in the south of France. Well, I have to say, Emily got quite agitated.

  Emily Gooding-Brown That sort of heat can be very dangerous for newborns. Risk of febrile convulsions.

  Flikka de Souza Air con darling!!! Anyway, I will need the break. I’ll be exhausted, and Mummy has lined up a divine local lady to come in and help so I’ll get lots of yummy lie-ins.

  Emily Gooding-Brown Lucky you being so laid back. I know I won’t let anyone else near my baby once he’s born. I’ll be like a tigress, I know it!!!!!!!

  I was so engrossed in this that I completely forgot about Jamie, who has stayed off school, complaining of a tummy ache. When I heard him calling me, I almost jumped out of my slack old skin!!!!!!

  I dragged myself out of the cubbyhole and pushed open the door of his bedroom. Jamie was sitting up in bed, playing on his PSP.

  “I’m bored,” he told me.

  Can there be anything more irritating than a child who ought to be at school making you break off work to tell you he’s bored?

  “Well, go to school then.”